emigrated to New England some forty
years before, and, after a rough experience of Indian captivity in the
wild woods of Maine, had settled down among his old neighbors in
Londonderry. Until nine years of age, Robert never saw a school. He was
a short time under the tuition of an old British soldier, who had strayed
into the settlement after the French war, "at which time," he says in a
letter to a friend, "I learned to repeat the shorter and larger
catechisms. These, with the Scripture proofs annexed to them, confirmed
me in the orthodoxy of my forefathers, and I hope I shall ever remain an
evidence of the truth of what the wise man said, 'Train up a child in the
way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.'" He
afterwards took lessons with one Master McKeen, who used to spend much of
his time in hunting squirrels with his pupils. He learned to read and
write; and the old man always insisted that he should have done well at
ciphering also, had he not fallen in love with Molly Park. At the age of
eighteen he enlisted in the Revolutionary army, and was at the battle of
Saratoga. On his return he married his fair Molly, settled down as a
farmer in Windham, formerly a part of Londonderry, and before he was
thirty years of age became an elder in the church, of the creed and
observances of which he was always a zealous and resolute defender. From
occasional passages in his poems, it is evident that the instructions
which he derived from the pulpit were not unlike those which Burns
suggested as needful for the unlucky lad whom he was commending to his
friend Hamilton:--

"Ye 'll catechise him ilka quirk,
An' shore him weel wi' hell."

In a humorous poem, entitled Spring's Lament, he thus describes the
consternation produced in the meeting-house at sermon time by a dog, who,
in search of his mistress, rattled and scraped at the "west porch
door:"--

"The vera priest was scared himsel',
His sermon he could hardly spell;
Auld carlins fancied they could smell
The brimstone matches;
They thought he was some imp o' hell,
In quest o' wretches."

He lived to a good old age, a home-loving, unpretending farmer,
cultivating his acres with his own horny hands, and cheering the long
rainy days and winter evenings with homely rhyme. Most of his pieces
were written in the dialect of his